


a heavy armor

by lifeofsnark



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Cave sex, Cunnilingus, F/M, Fanfic gap, Fingering, God this is soft, I'm tempted to tag this as armor kink, Multi, Oneshot, Smut, Vanilla, but they don't fuck with it on so know that, conversations about names, little slice of domesticity, p in v, so soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2019-12-03
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:28:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21653026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifeofsnark/pseuds/lifeofsnark
Summary: Domestic snapshots of the Mandalorian's time on Sorgan.Excerpt:If he didn’t know better, he’d suspect that the women were campaigning to get him out of his armor.“So could you be with a blind chick?” Cara asked as they walked the perimeter forest. There hadn’t been any more signs of AT-STs, but that one had been here for a reason, and they had yet to learn what it was.“What are you talking about?” he asked.(It was a question he’d had since puberty. He hoped the modulation of his helmet didn’t give that away.)“You know. The stupid mask thing. If someone sees you, you’re not supposed to put the mask back on. What if you’re with someone… but they don’t see you.”
Relationships: Cara Dune/Omera, Cara Dune/The Mandalorian/Omera (The Mandalorian TV), the mandalorian/omera
Comments: 44
Kudos: 364





	a heavy armor

### Suspicion is a heavy armor and with its weight it impedes more than it protects. – Robert Burns

Once, when he’d been smaller and weaker and soft, he’d hoped that the helmets his new family wore would insulate him from his fears and loneliness and worries. He’d hoped with the fervency of the very young or the very faithful; had prayed that the helm would muffle the screams in his head the same way it smothered sounds of the outside world. 

It didn’t. 

The helm made his own thoughts and worries echo like the inside of a cave, magnifying and diffusing the sound of his own fears until it he couldn’t tell if the sensations were coming from outside of himself, or the inside of his own mind. 

Eventually they quieted. He learned to be calm in any situation, to assess it tactically and coolly. He smelled only the cooly filtered air, chose to watch the world in the smooth monochrome of black and white, and listened, and listened, and listened. 

* * *

“You should name him.”

He kept the helm on natural noise, now. Sometimes, in a battle situation, he had it filter the noise of a crowd. Live ammunition was the song of his soul, whether it originated with him or his enemies. But here, in this peaceful place where women sang and children laughed and men called out jokes to each other, he listened to the noise unfiltered. He told himself that were he to remove his helm, Omera would sound the same way she does now. 

“He probably has a name.”

“Most people have more than one,” said Omera evenly. “A given name, and maybe a second. And a family name.”

Omera pointedly didn’t ask for _his_ name. She never asked him for more information than he would give. Sometimes he resented it. Sometimes he wished she would ask. 

“You could give him that second name,” she suggested. 

He tilted his head. It was a tic he’d picked up between his third set of armor and the fourth. Heavier, better armor didn’t easily allow for shrugging. 

“He and I understand each other.”

Omera continued to weave strands of water-soaked wood strips together. Her hands were quick and competent, and she spent nearly as much time watching the playing children as she did the fishing basket taking shape beneath her fingers.

She made a soft sound of acknowledgement, and not for the first time he wanted to know what that sound would feel like- did it hum in her throat, or purr in her chest? If he kissed her, would that sound have a taste? 

“My people- my ...culture. We think that names and faces have power.”

“They do,” she said, her tone as cool as the freshwater pools scattered around the village. “Names and faces are personal things.”

He took a long, slow breath of filtered air and held it for a moment, the same way he would before making a long-range shot. It was habit, as much a part of him as his voice or fingerprints. 

“I’m… concerned,” he said eventually. “The child. He’s fifty years old. He doesn’t speak, but he notices things.”

“He watches,” she agreed, making another soft noise of agreement. 

“Maybe he’s two in our years. Maybe three. But he’s been alive for _fifty.”_

Omera put down the basket she was weaving, and looked at him for a long moment. “You won’t be able to protect him forever.”

He thought about it on nights he couldn’t sleep. Most mornings his knees hurt, and his left shoulder didn’t have the same range of motion it once had. The _beskar_ armor would outlive him, now. His joints had another twenty years, maybe. (He wasn’t sure he wanted another twenty years of this, of dragging scum out from one pit and into another.)

“One of my people will take him in,” he said with more conviction than he felt. “We have no distinction between blood relatives and those who are found. A child is a child. A Mandalorian is a Mandalorian. It is the way.”

Omera gently bumped her shoulder against the hard curve of his armor. He felt his body tilt, but not the warmth of her body or the gentle give of his flesh against hers. “Children are borrowed anyway,” she said philosophically. “We have them for a time, and then they go out into the world.”

“Well said,” he told her. 

From across the scrubby lawn, the child giggled and cooed and clumsily lunged at a frog. The sun was high in the sky, and he knew it was blue. Most skies were. But from the inside of his helmet, he saw every last one as grey. 

* * *

“You look at the sky like you expect something to fall out of it.”

He set the axe on its head and rolled his neck, listening to his vertebra going _pop pop pop._

“Something might,” he told her. “You and I both know it.”

She shrugged and leaned against the side of Omera’s house, her fingers drumming restlessly on her gun belt. 

“You should enjoy good things when you find them,” said Cara.

“You’re one to talk.”

“Why?”

“You got out. Then you came back.”

“Watch me go enjoy myself,” she said, sashaying around the corner of Omera’s small wooden house. 

He glanced over at his little frog-eater, who was playing happily with a set of small wooden toys another child had lent him. Two of the toys were resting on the hard-packed dirt of the footpath. The other floated a few inches off the ground, and the child was watching it intently. 

With a sigh, he picked up the axe, lined up another section of log, and went back to work. 

From inside he heard a surprised gasp, and momentarily thought about filtering out all of the frequencies but those most used by the flap-eared child. But he wouldn’t- uncomfortable or no, these were the kind of sounds that he’d miss when ugliness and war inevitably found him again. 

Omera’s face peeked out the window and he waved stiffly, letting her know that he had eyes on the kids. Winta was chasing a small goat through the village, shrieking with delight. He wasn’t sure if that was a normal game or cause for concern, but none of the other adults he’d come to know seemed worried, so he’d let her fun continue. 

He neatly stacked the newly split wood and selected another section of log. He hefted the heavy axe, ignored the twinge in his shoulder, and brought down the blade, neatly splitting the log in two. 

A soft laugh from inside the house trailed off into a moan, and the breathy sound motivated him to swing faster, to drown out the sounds of pleasure with the sounds of his work. 

Cara had thrown him at Omera plenty of times. She dropped hints, and eventually she said, “If you aren’t going to make a move, I will.”

He’d nodded. It was better this was. (It was _the_ way.)

He’d had sex before. He wasn’t like the virgin jedi with their prissy rules of attachment. There were other Mandalorian girls growing up who’d been as… _hormonal_ as he’d once been. Besides, there were high-class whorehouses in the world who’d service anything but Hutts, and he’d been wealthy enough to have his pick of the ladies, helm or no.

But deep inside himself, he knew that a lack of contact and namelessness and even facelessness didn’t decrease the likelihood of affection. The kid was proof enough of that. No, the mask only helped delay the inevitable. Omera had taken to touching it as though it were his face, and Duney had asked pointed questions about whether or not he ever bathed, or if there was miniaturized ‘fresher technology hidden in his helm. 

There were more moans, now, filtering through the open window. Maybe the children here grew up knowing about sex, but saw it as an affectionate, positive thing. (He’d grown up knowing about sex, and it had been something for the dark. Both in the shadows, and in the mind.) Omera’s log pile was nearly up to her windowsill, so he expanded the right boundary of the logs and stacked more wood. 

He wasn’t jealous. He _wasn’t._ He hoped they found affection and pleasure together, but- he guessed he’d been hoping that if Omera and Cara found each other, they’d leave him alone. A man could only say no so many times. 

Sweat ran down his face and burned his eyes, but the instinct to reach up and wipe it away had long ago vanished. He mumbled curses under his breath and raised the axe, only to feel a butterfly-light tap on his calf. 

He looked down, and the big-eared baby had one hand pressed to his trousers. 

“What?”

The child blinked. 

“I’m working.”

The three-clawed hand pressed more insistently. There was a soft flutter of...something against his consciousness, something _other_ and terrifying. 

“I’ll take a break,” he said out of desperation, trying to distract the powerful little being. “You’ve been patient.”

The child was so light. He was all ears and stiff brown robes, and he fit neatly over one shoulder. Sometimes the kid would rest a hand on the helm, and he’d hear the occasional _tap tap_ of those short yellow claws on the steel. 

Balancing the cooing kid, he wandered through the village, keeping Winta in view. She and her friends had caught the goat, and they were, by turns, tugging, pushing, and bribing the goat back towards the livestock pens on the other side of the village. 

His- no, not his,- kid squealed at the sight of the sly-looking goat, and so he gamely held the little green body up to the goat for inspection. The baby shivered and tapped at his gloved hands, and then- damned if he knew what happened. The goat blinked and trotted all the way back to the pens. 

“Strange,” he muttered, weaving his way through the krill ponds. If he was lucky a non-toxic amphibian would jump out to keep the foundling occupied. 

No frogs, turtles, salamanders, or other cooperative water life appeared. With some amount of trepidation he headed back towards the house that was quickly becoming home. Omera and Cara were sitting close together on the porch steps. Omera’s busy hands were snapping beans for dinner, and when Cara spotted the two outworlders coming towards her she leaned over and slowly, sensuously, drug the tips of two fingers over the curve of Omera’s cheek. 

He noted the motion and tried to ignore it. He already knew the message Cara was trying to send. _You could have this,_ her fingers told him. _You could feel these fingers on your own skin, or you could find out if hers is as soft as it looks. I know these things, because I am brave._

“Your turn,” he said, plunking the kid into Duney’s lap and brushing past her into the shadows of the house. He hadn’t had anything to drink since midday, and his nose was itching. 

* * *

If he didn’t know better, he’d suspect that the women were campaigning to get him out of his armor. 

“So could you be with a blind chick?” Cara asked as they walked the perimeter forest. There hadn’t been any more signs of AT-STs, but that one had been here for a reason, and they had yet to learn it.

“What are you talking about?” he asked. 

(It was a question he’d had since puberty. He hoped the modulation of his helmet didn’t give that away.)

“You know. The stupid mask thing. If someone sees you, you’re not supposed to put the mask back on. What if you’re _with_ someone… but they don’t see you.”

“I don’t know.”

She shrugged, and walked along a few steps ahead of him. He knew she was walking with more sway to her step than usual. He didn’t dare let on that he noticed… but of _course_ he had. Beneath the metal he was as human as she was, and stars, she was all warm, human female. She moved with a sense of purpose and confidence that he’d seen in very few people over the years. She walked like a predator who didn’t even recognize that she could potentially be prey, and that attitude alone could have him wanting her. 

Of course, her attitude was all packaged up inside a body made of smooth skin over honed muscles with a tough jaw that belied the softness in her eyes. 

“What about the rest of it?” she asked. “What if you get injured and someone’s gotta take care of you?”

“That is allowed,” he said. It was the truth, and when that happened it was a strange feeling. He felt lighter without the weight of his armor, and if someone else was around it was nearly impossible to relax. Molting crabs must feel like that, with their softness exposed to the world. 

“You don’t smell,” his companion informed him blithely. “So I know you wash somewhere.”

He did. Far away from camp and in the middle of the night, because he had a feeling that like so many other things, Duney would be willing to press the issue. 

* * *

He’d expected Omera to be more subtle about the helm. He’d been wrong.

She walked in one evening while he was eating hurriedly over the stove, savoring the smell of spices and evening air and the soft touch of the breeze against his cheek. 

“Oh,” she said as he dropped the spoon he’d been lifting to his mouth. “I’m sorry.”

He’d spun away in time, and based on the rustle of twitching skirts so had she. He’d picked up his helm and held it between clenched hands, the coolness of the steel grounding him. 

“Were you finished with supper?” she asked. 

He’d been wrong. The helmet didn’t convey her voice to him precisely as it was in life. The helm was close, but it lost the huskiness of her voice and the edges of her breaths as they fluttered along the words. 

“No,” he said, louder than he should have. 

“I’m sorry,” she said, but she didn’t leave. 

He waited. 

“Would it be so bad?” Omera asked. “To not put the helm on again?”

 _No._ “Yes.”

“I didn’t see you.”

“Good.”

“I could stay like this,” she said hesitantly. “We could talk while you finish your meal. I won’t peek.”

“I trust you,” he said. He did. He didn’t trust himself. 

“And I trust you,” she said, her voice quiet but strong. 

* * *

He should have known it wouldn’t end with helm-less conversations over dinner.

One night Winta developed a fever, and Omera moved her down from the loft onto the couch where he usually slept. His little swamp-rat continued to sleep peacefully by the fire in his blanket-lined bloodfruit box, and so this lonely Mandalorian had stumbled out onto the porch with a blanket and a sharp ear. 

Eventually Winta settled, and he heard the front door open softly, the hinges creaking in the humid night air. 

“You could take my bed,” Omera whispered. “Since Winta took yours.”

“That’s not necessary,” he said. He wouldn’t survive the night if he took to Omera’s bed. Even if he couldn’t smell her on the sheets he’d known that this was the fabric that hugged her body every night, that this was her warmth lingering in the down topper of her mattress. 

She sat down beside him on the top step and for a moment they looked over the shadowy village and krill ponds, the still water reflecting back the light of infinite and unchanging stars. 

Then she leaned against him. (Then she _melted_ against him.)

“You’re warm,” she told him. 

He’d wrapped a blanket around his naked torso, but he could feel her own warmth through the thin wool. He could feel her breath blowing over the knuckles of his hand where he held the blanket closed. 

“So are you.”

“Is this allowed?”

“It isn’t forbidden,” he replied, which seemed to act as good-enough permission for her. 

“When was the last time you touched someone?” she asked. “Skin to skin, just because you wanted to.”

It had been years, and the last woman he’d touched had been a whore. He wouldn’t tell her that under torture, though. “I was injured,” he said finally. “One of my brothers helped to care for me until the bacta-wrap had done its work.”

Feeling as though he was possessed, he unwrapped his blanket and swung both his arm and the warm wool around her shoulders. She pressed closer, her fingers and cheek against his skin, and he held her to him. 

_This was inevitable,_ he told himself as Omera attempted to drive him to insanity by rubbing her cheek against the curve of his shoulder. _Like escaping a singularity. Loss of control was unavoidable._

“How’s Winta?”

“Sleeping, for now.”

“How are you?”

“Better,” she murmured, somehow relaxing into him even more fully. 

That was a revelation. 

He was comfortable with his body. It was an excellent tool, one he maintained the same way he cared for all of his weapons and responsibilities. He knew his body’s limits, knew how strong it was, how far it could bend, how he could stand to intimidate or reassure others. 

He hadn’t understood that his body could be a source of comfort for someone else. He’d known that that was how pack-oriented lifeforms operated, but he knew that the same way he knew that solar systems spun around a sun: it was important, it happened, and it had next to no impact on his day-to-day life. 

Except now it did. Now he’d walk through the rest of his life knowing how it felt to have a woman melting into him in the coolness of the night, how it felt to have his breathing slow until it matched her inhales and exhales, how the air between them warmed. 

(How soft her skin was. How light she felt, slumped into him. How between the space of one heartbeat and the next his pulse sung _protect, protect, protect._ )

He’d never had a problem with alcohol, or stimulants, or gambling, or pain. 

But this? This softness and acceptance, this feeling of family and affection? He’d yearn for this. He knew it, just as he’d always known that he was going to die bloody, just as he knew the universe would expand into nothingness and catastrophe. 

He couldn’t give in. If he wanted to protect Omera and Winta and Cara and this whole strange, peaceful village, he’d have to leave. 

Eventually. But not tonight. 

* * *

“Kriffing hell.”

“Cara,” said Omera fondly, nodding at their friend and housemate. 

“How long has this been going on?” she asked, standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips. Posed like that she was backlit by the two rising moons of Sorgan, her hair curling damply around her shoulders. She’d been bathing, and she was armorless as well. 

Omera shrugged, which only rubbed her skin against his. “A while.”

“And you _didn’t invite me,_ ” she griped, kicking off her unlaced boots and striding across the intricately hooked rug on the sitting room floor. He and Omera were sitting side by side in front of the fire, watching the blue and lavender flames of burning salt-cypress dancing in the stone hearth. 

Cara dropped down on the rug behind Omera and wriggled up to press her front into the other woman’s back. Cara’s legs bracketed Omera’s, and the warmth of her thigh pressed against his own. Omera kept her head resting on his shoulder, and Cara pressed her hard chin into the curve where Omera’s shoulder met her neck. 

“This is nice,” said Cara, groping over his lap until he gave her his hand to hold. Hers was broader than Omera’s, and calloused in different places. They were all workers, they’d all been touched by the war that had raged on for generations, and they’d all found themselves here, in this quiet cabin that felt like it was at the end of the civilized world. 

There was poetry to that. 

He felt… greedy. He was a Mandalorian, his body was a weapon and weapons were his religion, and yet he wanted not just one of these women, but _both_ of them. 

(He thought they wanted him, too. And that meant that they outnumbered him.)

“I think,” he said quietly, checking to see that the kid was asleep in his fruit box. “I think that it would be okay. If none of us could see each other.”

Cara perked up. “The blind chick?”

“Yeah,” he said slowly, feeling surrender in every word. “The blind chick.”

Omera looked questioningly over her shoulder at Cara, who took her lips in an eager kiss. This time he could feel the warmth their bodies gave off, this time he could feel Duney’s hand clenching on his, this time he wanted the helm _off._

He could be patient a little longer. (He hoped)

* * *

“Come on,” said Omera, tugging him by the hand. The entrance to the cave was wide and high, the pale limestone worn smooth by water and wind and time. “It’s safe. I know the way.”

He wasn’t worried about getting lost, although maybe he should be. Omera and Winta had told them all about the limestone sinkholes and caves that studded this portion of the planet. The ancient, nature-formed pools were what had allowed their ancestors to begin their farms, and now the soft stone and rich soil allowed for Omera and her kin to carve out their modern pools and to plant barley and oats on the high, dry portions of the valley. 

Karst topography also explained the warren of caves and tunnels that cut through the rolling hills. Omera had teased that there were so many caverns and paths that even the bat-eared boy could spend the rest of his natural life trying to find his way back out. 

The child’s ears had flattened and his eyes had gone wide, and so she’d pulled the kid into her lap to cuddle until he realized that her joke was only that: a tease between family. 

Behind the safety of his armor, his heart had begun to beat a little faster. _Family._ Another found family, and didn’t that make it just as important as his first? The Mandalorians understood those bonds, surely they did. Family was family was family. Trust was trust. (But in the same way, tradition was tradition.)

“Where are the kids?” he asked. 

“With my mother.”

 _They’d planned this,_ and he was thankful for it. 

The tunnel began to slope downwards, and after one particularly sharp bend to the right all of the ambient light from the mouth of the cave was snuffed out. Only the light from his helm and Omera’s small lantern showed them the way. 

He knew what would happen next. His heart began to race, and inside his leather gloves his palms were sweating in a way they never did before a fight. 

Eventually the hard floor of the cave transitioned to soft, fine sand, and he had the impression of space: a vaulted ceiling studded here and there with dripping spikes. The walls shimmered with small mineral crystals, and at the far end of the space Omera’s lantern light was reflected in a perfectly still pool. 

With no warning, Omera blew the lantern out, and the cave was plunged into darkness. _True_ darkness, not the half-shadowed, secondhand light of a big city, not the tinted sleep-cycle of a ship out in the black of space. 

No, this was earthen darkness. The darkness of burial, the darkness of the womb, a _freeing_ kind of darkness. 

He took off his helm. 

For the first time in thirty years he took off his helmet in front of someone else, and he didn’t feel the urge to put it back on. Here in the stygian darkness of a place without a sun, they were equals.

“What is this place?” he asked. His voice sounded odd like this. He sounded older, and his voice was rougher than he’d expected. 

“Come and see,” said Omera, and her hand found him in the darkness. She slid her fingers down until they twined with his own, and she confidently led him through the darkness to the smooth edge of the cave wall. “Feel,” she told him. 

At first he couldn’t tell the difference between the seemingly random grooves in the stone. “Carvings?” he guessed. 

“Names,” she told him. 

He pulled off his gloves, placed them carefully into his empty helm, then touched the wall again. He could tell the beginnings and endings of names now, and here and there he could feel that they were inside of a heart, or a circle. 

“It’s the local ...secluded nook,” she said, and in the intimate dark she sounded huskier and more confident. 

“Honeymoon suite, huh,” said Duney.

“Cara…” he breathed. He’d never heard her without the helm before, and he recognized it as his warrior friend, but- but her voice was higher and clearer than he’d expected, without the slight rasp of Omera’s voice that had haunted his dreams. 

“Over here, big guy,” she said. 

He set his helm in the sand by the wall, kicked off his shoes, and hoped that one of them had packed a blanket. He was fine with having sand inside his armor for the rest of his natural life, it would be worth it for this, but having sand inside _that_ \- it didn’t bear thinking about. 

* * *

He could smell her, salt and musk and life on the air, and she tasted nearly the same, but darker, earthier. She tasted like his memories of spring: hidden and damp and fresh, with the promise of more to come. 

A hand stroked over the back of his head. Cara, maybe, or Omera herself. It didn’t matter like this: the world had narrowed to only the three of them, only this cave, only the next kiss and next laugh and next touch. 

“What does she taste like? Cara asked, her voice sultry and soft in the darkness. 

He groaned his answer into her cunt, eliciting a moan from Omera in return. He could feel her thighs quivering around his ears, and then-

Cara slid her fingers between his mouth and Omera’s clit. “It’s sensitive,” she said. “Gotta give it a break. Fuck her with your tongue, maybe. Spread the love around.”

He bit her finger, which earned him another gasp that echoed through the cave. He moved down to fuck Omera with his tongue, wet and eager and sloppy and more earnest than skilled, but she didn’t seem to mind. He thought he could do this for the rest of his life: no air, no food, no water, just _OmeraCara_ and _CaraOmera._

(For once he didn’t fear drowning. Water was one of the only things Mandalorians feared: swimming in _beskar_ wasn’t ...ideal.)

“Are you gonna make her come?” Cara asked that clear, gorgeous voice. “Hmm? Come on that pretty mouth.”

“ _Stars,_ Cara, shut up, you’re- oh,” Omera sighed.

He didn’t know what Cara had done, but both of them stopped talking. Omera’s thighs were shaking and he slid one hand up to her belly and caressed her there, pressing down to hold her in place. The cave echoed with a reverie of sounds blurring and mixing together: wet sucks, sighs, moans, the shift of skin on skin and the grind of sand on sand. The cave itself was a helm of sorts, but this time _he had people inside with him._

Omera came apart under his mouth, her back bowing up and her thighs going rigid. He wished he could see her in her pleasure, he wished- but there was no use in wishing, especially not here. 

There was the soft sound of a kiss, and he slid up Omera’s body to press his face to Cara’s cheek, and then Omera’s lips, and then to Cara again, lazily back and forth. He had a hand on a breast, and someone’s fingers were scraping over the nape of his neck, but it was all safe and soft and equal here in the warm, welcoming darkness. Omera sat up, and he could feel his shoulder bumping against Cara: heavier muscle, the smell of cedar and citrus, short, soft hair. (Omera was all long, lean lines and floral soap and hair he could get lost in.)

“Cara,” Omera sighed, and there was another gentle sucking, kissing noise. “Do you want his mouth, or his cock? You’ve been so patient.”

A hungry noise echoed up to pool among the stalactites on the roof of their cavern. 

“Mouth,” said Cara on a groan. Her muscles had tensed, and he gave into temptation and bent to nibble at the curve of her shoulder, marveling at the strength and beauty there. She was compassionate and strong, wily and patient, earthy and kind. 

“There’s a tip for you, Mando. Never, ever pass up the chance for head. Give head, get head, stars. There’s nothing kriffing like it in the universe. 

Omera laughed, and he needed to taste that joy, so he lurched her way, pleased when his nose grazed her chin and he could cup her jaw, tilt her head back for his kisses. 

“I want you,” she whispered. “Both of you, right here.” _While I can still hold you_ went unspoken, but he knew it was there. He knew she was waiting for them to leave again, but he wouldn’t think about it here. Not now. 

“I don’t have protection,” he said, finally squeezing a fist around his painfully throbbing cock. He’d been able to ignore it as long as he was focused on the women, but now it felt like a gust of air would be enough to have him coming all over himself like a child. 

“After Winta, the implant- it’s okay,” said Omera, placing both hands on his shoulders and pressing herself to him, her breasts soft against his chest.

He ran his hands up and down her sides, perversely satisfied to hear her coming apart the same way he was. “Are you sure?” he asked. It was an intimate enough act, to take him inside herself. But this way, with no armor and no mask and no rubber between them…

“Yes,” she said, pressing up on her knees to drag the cleft of her sex against the base of his cock. “Yes.”

* * *

“It seems like a shame not to use that mouth while he still has the helmet off,” said Cara, running the tip of a finger over the dip in his upper lip. “Oh, and he hasn’t shaved today.”

“You make it difficult,” he said, lightly biting that roving finger. “I know you’re trying to see me without the helm. Shaving by moonlight is… not advisable.”

Cara laughed, gloriously alive and unrepentant. Her mirth echoed, and the echoes made it seem like his lovers were everywhere, all around him in the warm, still air that smelled like them. 

“Hmm,” hummed Omera, and finally he could lean in to taste that sound, to feel her thoughtful little purr. She kissed him back, wet and filthy, and when she bit his lower lip he didn’t think he could get any harder. “His mouth truly is something.”

Warm hands pressed him onto his back, someone began to slowly toy with his cock, and then- it was Cara, he knew her smell (cedar and citrus) and the shape of her hard jaw- bent to kiss him. Her kiss was delicate and gentle, a slow drag of mouth on mouth, and it was belied by Omera’s increasingly insistent tugs of his cock. 

“Please,” he said, his fingers clenching in the blanket beneath him. 

“Spread your legs,” said Omera, her voice husky. 

“Think I’m supposed to say that,” he muttered, and then Cara laughed again. He did as he was asked, and he was rewarded by the press of Omera’s knees on each side of his waist and the slow drag of her damp pussy against his cock. 

“Fuck,” he mumbled, gripping her hips tightly. He hoped she didn’t bruise. (Except the possessive part of him that lived in the shadows… that part hoped she did.)

“No rushing,” said Cara, gripping his wrists and moving his hands from Omera’s hips to her own waist.

He shuddered and knew that if he didn’t move in the next second, he would die. It was as inevitable as the heat-death of the universe. Omera was still teasing him, rubbing herself up and down his painfully-hard cock, and then Cara swung herself over him and her damp core was pressed against his chest, and-

He pulled her towards him, enjoying Omera’s gasp as his abdomen clenched, and then her pussy was over his chin and Cara’s fingers were in his hair and guiding him to where she wanted him. The world narrowed to her bitter, salty, life-warm cunt, and he fell into the rhythm of sucking and jaw-bumping and tongue flicking. 

And then Omera worked him into her cunny and he wondered how women could walk through their lives with molten, lava-planet cores. He moaned and bucked his hips, enjoying the resistance provided by two female bodies, and Cara groaned in return. 

The rest… was overwhelming. He didn’t know who set the pace, but after bumping and gasping they found a rhythm that worked for all of them: Omera’s hips and his mouth and Cara’s trembling thighs all rocking together, racing towards their inevitable conclusion. 

Cara came first, slumping forward over his head, one hand yanking at his hair and the other braced on the sand. 

She fell to the side, a soft thump in the dark, and his hands found their way back to Omera’s hips. 

“Yes,” she whispered, half word and half pant. He urged her hips backwards and forwards, thinking of the time he had to travel to Nal Hutta for a bounty. Remembering the smell alone should be enough for him to lose his erection, but here he was, seconds away from embarrassing himself. 

He thrust a hand between the two of them, his fingers sliding over sweat and slick, and when he brushed against the place where he sank into her body he groaned curses. When he found her clit he circled clumsily, doing his best to make her come along with him. 

It worked. Finally he couldn’t wait any longer, and he bucked up against her as her cunt fluttered around him. She fell forward, crumpling against his chest, and he hung onto her hips and felt his mind go blissfully, beautifully blank. 

“Stars,” Omera whispered. 

A hand slid over his flank and up Omera’s side. “Go, team,” said Cara from the shadows. “But next time we bring a canteen. And a snack.”

Omera laughed, her breath puffing over his skin, and in the dark he closed his eyes, rejoicing in the affection, in their skin, and all of the things he was hearing and smelling and feeling.

They were together in every way that mattered, while around them their echoes blended and whispered and faded like mist in the dawn.

* * *

He dressed in the dark, while the child slumbered in his bloodfruit box. 

What would Omera keep in that box when they’d gone? Kindling, he supposed. That’s probably what had been in the sturdy fireside box before they’d arrived. 

Cotton boxers first, and a clean undershirt. Then socks, and the heavy brown canvas pants and shirt that kept his armor from rubbing any more calluses into his skin. Boots, heavy and broken-in just a little too far: falling arches, thinning rubber, a tendency to leak if a puddle was too deep or the rain came down too hard. 

Then the mask: cool to the touch, and deeply familiar. He’d recognize the shape and weight of this helm more easily than he recognized himself. In some ways it _was_ him: it was the face he showed the world, the profile he cast in shadow, the recognition marker used by those who thought they knew him. 

He was leaving today. He’d stayed here on Sorgan for a season, and then the assassin came with the winter. If he and the kid remained any longer more hunters would come, and it would be his fault if Omera or Winta or any of the welcoming villagers were hurt. So he’d take the child, and do his best to keep the babe safe. 

(That’s what any parent would do. It’s what any _family_ would do.)

He set the helm back down. 

On days that he slept outside of the helmet, it was always the first thing that went back on. He reached for it when he was hungover and needed to piss like a fire-suppression system, he grabbed it when he was mostly asleep, he reached for it like a babe might reach for its mother. 

But today he put it back down, looking at his own warped reflection in the strong curve of the steel. 

He didn’t know what he looked like. Not really. He owned a shaving mirror only large enough to show him one side of his jaw at a time, never his whole face. He could remember only impressions of himself, but they didn’t matter, not really. 

He was the man in the mask. He was a Mandalorian. 

The kid cooed in his sleep, gently turning so that his face was towards the mostly-dead coals of last-night’s fire. 

He strapped on his breastplate first, then the corresponding back plate. Then the shoulder caps, then the gauntlets. Thighs, shins, gloves. 

Only the helmet remained on the couch that had been his bed. He picked it up, and turned it around and around. 

He wanted to see them. 

Cara and Omera had taken to sharing a bed. The house was small, and Omera’s hand-hewn bed was large, and even in this low marsh valley, winter nights were cool. 

On silent feet he padded across the rug and stood outside their door. No light shone under the threshold, and he couldn’t hear sounds from the inside. With his heart pounding almost painfully, he put one hand to the doorknob and turned it slowly. 

It didn’t make a noise. 

He cracked the door. 

They were facing him, curled into each other in their sleep. Cara’s head had slipped off the pillow they might have been sharing, her hair messy and feathered out over the turquoise sheets. Her mouth was slightly open: that mouth he’d kissed, and fucked, and laughed at, and loved. 

He’d never seen it without the filters of the helm. It was a soft pink, gentler than he expected, innocent in a way that the rest of the woman was not. 

Omera’s hair was in a long, loose braid that rested over her shoulder. He couldn’t make out the line of her jaw, or the regal jut of her nose, but he could see the smooth brown of her skin, nearly the same color as his own. Her arm was draped over the curve of Cara’s waist: a protector, even in sleep. 

As he slowly pulled the door shut he saw Omera’s eyelashes fluttering, and he quickly slipped the helm back on, returning to the cool, scentless reality he’d known for all of his adult life.

He’d seen them, his lovers, seen them without threat assessment aids or color filters or glare reduction. He knew how they looked, how they smelled, how they sounded when they laughed or cried or came. 

It would have to be enough. 

The child was sitting up in his nest of blankets when he returned to the fire. He smiled and cooed as he pulled the heavy brown cowl down over those big ears, and beneath the _beskar_ steel, he smiled back. 

He’d clung to the helm not for any religion or sense of destiny. Not because what he feared it would mean if he stayed, armorless and loved, in this freshwater valley. No, he’d hung on to the helmet for this reason: a tiny green mage with big eyes and ears. It would take a Mandalorian to keep him safe, and it would take future Mandalorians to protect him until he reached adulthood in his own time. 

He picked up the child and looked at him, backlit by the lavender monochrome of early dawn beyond the windows. 

The child reached out and tapped on the T-port that marked the _Taung_ cross of their culture. 

He tapped once, twice, three times in steady succession, his expressive little face serious. 

“We have to go,” his heavy-hearted caretaker told him. “For them. And for you.”

The child didn’t nod or look away. He simply watched. 

“Maybe one day,” he said slowly. “We can come back here. Once we find the person who put a bounty on your head, and see that it’s… removed.”

* * *

Once, when he’d been full of a child’s hope, he’d assumed that the helmets his new surrogate family wore would insulate him from his fears and loneliness and worries. It hadn’t, and so he’d moved on. He’d learned to calm himself, for he was all he had. He’d learned to live with the echoes of things long gone.

But now, on the bridge of his ship (nested shells, ship-helm-him) he knew that it wasn’t just loss and an acceptance of fate that lived inside his helmet. Like the myth of old, the steel walls had trapped hope inside along with him. 

Hope was the gift that Omera and Cara and Winta had given him, and so he’d left them with one in return. 

He found a pencil in the kitchen drawer, and a bit of brown paper that had come to the village as packaging on barley seeds. 

_NAMES HAVE POWER_ , he wrote in uncomfortable block letters. _MINE IS DYN JARREN._

_MAYBE WHEN I COME BACK, YOU CAN USE IT._


End file.
